British politics

Bagehot on the move

MY print column this week looks at the deep anger and anti-politics contempt that suffuses national debate in Britain just now. I suggest that British voter rage is oddly encouraging. In lots of debt-ridden western nations, anger at the government is fatalistic, almost nihilistic, and too often focuses on preserving a crumbling status quo and clinging desperately to dwindling sectoral privileges. In Britain, I would argue, voter rage is more constructive: if people are furious about what they see as the unfairness of life in today's Britain that is because they expect it to feel fair.

Britain and the EU

MY PRINT column this week considers the political implications in Britain of the deepening euro crisis:

DAVID CAMERON does not want Britain to leave the European Union, though he finds it exasperating and fears euro-zone meltdown could cost him re-election. His Liberal Democrat coalition partner, Nick Clegg, is a pro-European. Nor does the Labour opposition leader, Ed Miliband, want out. Mr Miliband is a European social democrat by instinct (his relatives were refugees from the Holocaust) and by judgment, seeing the EU as a way of delivering public goods such as action on climate change.

George Osborne's big bet on austerity

MY PRINT column this week listens to a chorus of criticism about George Osborne, the chancellor of the exchequer, and considers which bits might matter.

EVER since he delivered his budget to Parliament on March 21st, troubles have rained down on George Osborne. He has U-turned and dodged, to the press's glee. The chancellor's colleagues ask whether he is steering Britain on the right course, amid the most perilous economic storms in memory.

Some on the right of the Conservative Party loudly assail the chancellor, accusing him of lacking a credible plan for growth.

The United Kingdom Independence Party

MY COLUMN this week is about UKIP, the British political party campaigning for withdrawal from the EU.

ANGRY insurgents rarely prosper in British politics. Two big things help explain this: voting rules and sniggering. Britain's first-past-the-post voting system is rather brutal to small parties. And if electoral rules do not snare a would-be demagogue then mocking laughter probably will. It is a brave politician who stands before British voters, face red and voice shaking with fury. There is always the risk that at some climactic moment a heckler will interrupt, posing a variant on the ancient British question: just who do you think you are?

Britain and the EU

WEARY readers may find this hard to believe, but Bagehot tries hard to ration the amount that he writes about the European Union. After five years in Brussels from 2005 to 2010, including three writing the Charlemagne column for this newspaper, I am acutely conscious of the need not to dwell too much on one aspect of British policy.

Alas, the story of Britain's relations with Europe comes under the heading complicated but important (or even, a lot of the time, boring but important).

As patient readers may have noticed from a few columns and blog postings over the past few months, I think that Britain's relationship with the EU is in pretty ropey shape.

Democracy, Parliament and the British

MY PRINT column this week is a profile of John Bercow, Speaker of the House of Commons:

NOTHING in Britain's constitutional traditions obliges the Speaker of the House of Commons to woo voters. Within the Gothic halls of the Palace of Westminster, the Speaker is a mini-monarch, escorted to the chamber by a mace-bearer, a doorkeeper and a chaplain, while a policeman shouts at people to remove their hats. From his canopied chair, the Speaker can summon the prime minister to explain himself and silence the mightiest office-holder with a glance.

The British monarchy

QUEEN Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee celebrations are just over a week away. My print column this week ponders what royal jubilees reveal about Britain.

BEFORE Queen Elizabeth's Silver Jubilee in 1977, the villagers of West Hoathly in Sussex were placed under secret observation. A file was drawn up, noting their views on the monarchy, the country and the impending celebrations. The royal family was marvellous but these festivities had better not cost too much, said one villager, recorded as “Nurse, female, 50”, explaining: “People are not in the mood.”

Britain and France

IT BEING Friday, I hope readers will tolerate a snippet of breaking news from the streets of South Kensington, nerve centre of the French expatriate community in London. Bicycling down the Fulham Road a short while ago, Bagehot was passed by a gleaming Aston Martin, twin exhausts rumbling like a freight train, and French number plates (33 code, so from Bordeaux, at a guess). I was all ready to shout: "Bloody asylum seekers" at the driver, but decided the gag might not work in translation.

Britain and the EU

THE war drums are pounding among those dreaming of a referendum on EU membership.

As noted in a post last week, Peter Mandelson, the former Labour cabinet minister, co-inventor of Blairism and ex-European Union trade commissioner, stirred things up with a lecture at Oxford University, suggesting that pro-Europeans (of whom he is one) should support such a vote, if and when euro-zone integration deepens to such an extent that Britain finds itself an associate member of a two-tier club.

Lord Mandelson's democratic analysis was hard to dispute. He noted that 56% of respondents want a referendum on British membership.

Britain's House of Lords

MY PRINT column this week looks at the politics of House of Lords reform, and suggests that this dry-sounding subject is actually a rather important clash about power and its transmission.

SOME years back the BBC enjoyed a surprise hit with a spoof chat-show presented by Mrs Merton, a fictional northern housewife whose trick was skewering guests with mock-naive questions. One noted interview, with a willowy beauty married to a diminutive magician, featured the query: “So, what first attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?” The concept of the “Mrs Merton question” duly entered the national lexicon.

Elected mayors

A WHILE back, debate gripped David Cameron's inner circle, on the subject of how to persuade a sceptical British public to embrace elected city mayors. A rather abstruse ambition to outsiders, the creation of elected mayors in towns and cities across Britain has been a gleam in the eye of those close to the prime minister since their days in opposition.

Those insiders have had a rough day, with nine out of ten cities that were holding referendums on whether to move to an elected mayor rejecting the idea. Manchester, Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham, Sheffield, Wakefield, Coventry, Leeds and Bradford voted No.

Britain and the EU

DESPITE stiff competition from local and mayoral election results involving almost 200 local authorities across England, Wales and Scotland, Peter Mandelson, the former Labour cabinet minister, co-inventor of Blairism and ex-European Union trade commissioner, is set to make headlines this afternoon by calling for Britain to hold an in-out referendum on EU membership.

Voices on the Tory right have already reacted with enthusiasm, with ConservativeHome arguing that David Cameron should follow Lord Mandelson's lead and announce an in-out referendum.

William Hague in Asia

MY PRINT column this week reports on William Hague's recent visit to south-east Asia and what it reveals about the Foreign Secretary's vision for British foreign policy. The essence of British diplomacy Hague-style, I suggest, can be summed up in a phrase I watched him utter in a crowded lecture theatre in Hanoi: friendliness mixed with self-interest.

Rupert Murdoch and the British parliament

TOM Watson, the Labour MP who has done more than most members of the British Parliament to uncover wrongdoing within the media companies run by Rupert Murdoch, likes to compare the Murdoch press to an organised crime gang. Tiring of claims by James Murdoch—the patriarch's son and a former boss of the firm's British media interests—that he knew nothing of illegal behaviour in his firm's tabloid newsrooms, Mr Watson famously called him “the first mafia boss in history who didn't know he was running a criminal enterprise”.

Fixing British education

CHARLOTTE Leslie, the thoughtful new Conservative MP for Bristol North West, makes an interesting suggestion in today's Daily Telegraph. Given that improving the quality of teachers is a big part of the vital task of improving British state education, and given that professions such as medicine have no trouble attracting high-quality recruits, might there be useful lessons for the educational establishment to learn from the professional training given to surgeons?

Ms Leslie, the daughter of a surgeon, notes that ministers have spent years wrestling with the puzzle of giving good teachers the freedom to teach while preventing bad teachers from wrecking the lives of children.

In this blog, our Bagehot columnist surveys the politics of Britain, British life and Britain's place in the world. The column and blog are named after Walter Bagehot, an English journalist who was the editor of The Economist from 1861 to 1877. The blog is currently on hiatus after a change of Bagehot columnist.